Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

In return for a few slivers of their soul.

Despite the thought, I flicked the prayer wheel again. The tonal notes sat up in the air, not loud but with an even hum, but since I wasn’t worshipping anyone, I was safe enough. One thing I’d discovered in my year with the agents of Light was that intention was what gave a person’s actions, and life, meaning. If one lived focused on their greatest desires to the exclusion of all else, then the Universe would move and redirect energy to provide the desired results. I flicked the wheel again and caught a rhythm. The chain reeled around, sending the magic out into the Universe.

So what was my intent? My greatest desire? Certainly not to ration out what was left of my soul to the Tulpa.

But seeing him dead? Yeah, that would be nice. I’d love to watch all the negative energy responsible for the Tulpa’s powers spiral out-whirl, whirl, whirl-dissolving harmlessly into the Universe. But then what? I frowned. Leave Warren free to run this valley the way he saw fit? That no longer seemed right either.

The prayer wheel whirled steadily now; I’d caught my rhythm.

Finding my mother was an obvious driving need, maybe because her desertion hadn’t been absolute. Zoe Archer straddled the divide between here and gone, super and mortal, truth and lies. She was like oxygen to me, invisible but vital, and as long as she was out there, I would want to find her. I could admit that much-whirl, whirl-at least to myself.

And then there was Hunter.

I shut my eyes, flicked my wrist and recalled his face. “Hunter…”

Why was it so hard to let go of someone who’d so carelessly released me? It hadn’t been done in a void after all, not like Zoe, her whereabouts unknown. No, he’d left me for another woman-one he’d courted against troop rules, one he’d married, and one he’d chased after for years, even after meeting me.

So why?

Because he’d regretted his decision. I’d seen it in those underground tunnels, lurking in him like an undiagnosed disease. At the last, right before he abandoned this world, a small part of him wanted to stay, wanted me to understand. Wanted me .

There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Not even in the darkest corner of that beautiful soul.

Yes, Hunter had known my darkness, tasted it, and even taken it on when sharing the aureole. But ours wasn’t a onetime connection. It was a magic that reared its head every time we touched, when we made love, both of us willing it to grow stronger.

That was what Trish meant when she’d spoken of a soul connection.

So would it have lived between us if not for the aureole? How beautiful would he have found me without it?

Would I even have had a chance of capturing his interest in my current fragile, mortal , state?

Whatever the answer, it neither changed the past nor the one thing that kept bucking whenever I mentally tried to say good-bye: Hunter had offered up his body as a soft place for me to land in a season where everything was hard. I’d been on my heels in my new role as the Kairos, part of a world I hadn’t known existed. My sister’s death had rocked me back further. And, in the hours before the first time we made love, the shock of finding my childhood lover locked in the embrace of a mortal enemy had flattened my will to live.

For a while Hunter made all of that better, if not okay. And it hadn’t been a one-sided seduction. I could own up to my part in it all. I hadn’t turned to him as much as I’d fled, finding solace in his strength and peace in his acceptance. Hunter had helped steady me in my new life.

The magic of the aureole connecting us? That was just fucking icing .

“Jo?”

My hand came to an abrupt stop as I opened my eyes, the sacred sound from the prayer wheel breaking into two syllables, then down into silence. I was on the floor of what looked and smelled like a Babylonian garden.

“Oh, hell no.” The syllables scratched the air like stencils.

“That’s what you get for flinging around a prayer wheel,” I muttered, standing cautiously and trying to blink away the reality before me. But there was no blinking it away.

I was in Midheaven. Again.

I couldn’t tell who’d called me. Between the whirring of the prayer wheel’s chain cutting air like newly sharpened shears, it had been a fractured sound, like a computer getting a hard boot. But at least I knew where I was.

Another elemental room, I thought, glancing about, my breath echoing hollowly in the tinny air. What else could it be? It was both as shockingly ornate as the odd water room, and as mysterious as Solange’s fire room, yet singularly different than both. Weighed down beneath the scents of verdant foliage and humidity, it would have also been as dim as a late-lying sunset were it not for the twinkling lights strung across drooping boughs by the hundreds. A tentative, almost playful breeze pressed against me, and I shivered as I glanced up at a ceiling hidden by viny whips and a cover of evergreen and pine. More lights winked like stars between the branches, and I shivered again, recalling Solange’s sky of soul-encrusted stars.

But how the hell did I get here? Shen had told me on my last go-round with the elemental rooms that drugs were what allowed incorporeal passage into this world.

Apparently incense and a prayer wheel counted.

And what about calling forth the world in my mind? I hadn’t called Midheaven to me; I hadn’t even been thinking about it.

No. Just about someone living here. Rolling my eyes at my own stupidity, I searched for some other sort of exit while trying to forget Diana’s helpful addendum: that I needed someone to pull me back out of the world in case Solange found me here.

Flat, stone-topped lanterns were tucked amid the greenery, while topiaries and pyramid-shaped shrubs popped up like the heads of curious gnomes. Centered was a small lawn with a gravel pathway cutting the middle, while a small pond sparkling with refracted light sat to my right. Moss in every shade of green climbed boulders slick with algae, and a cluster of wild roses burst brightly from verdant thistle where berries also glistened with dew.

Yet all was not nature and silva. Curving chaises and concrete lounge chairs dotted the small space, and baroque chandeliers swung from the lowermost branches of the accommodating pines. Seductive statues cast inquisitive glances my way, and wrought-iron side tables were layered in lace and pastel spun silk.

The coup de grace was the giant stone table tucked beneath a Japanese cherry tree caught in full bloom. A tiered tray held finger sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, quiche, and tiny pastel petit fours tucked between slivers of white cake. A mirrored side buffet sported crystal goblets and flutes, and a perfect mismatching of gorgeous bone china.

“A fucking tea party.” My metallic mutter skipped sound waves like a rock.

“You’d prefer a latte from the drive-through, I suppose?”

I’d been anticipating an appearance by the dangerous rulers of this pretty little world, and whirled to run smack into the chest of an all-too-real, and apparently bemused, Hunter Lorenzo. He quirked a brow, and steadied me with one hand.

“Of course.” I pulled away, trying to hide my shock, my alarm. My pleasure . “I’m American.”

He merely motioned to the tea set. I looked around, waiting for ambush or at least to wake up. Nothing happened, so I inched past a fern floor and moved farther into the garden. “Tricked-out pad,” I said lightly, though my heart was pounding, making my throat tight.

“The earth room,” he said, confirming my prior suspicions. His voice was as leaden as mine. “Whatever you used to induce the dream state must have been from the dust.”